S1E25: A Bad Day At the Office

Work in IT for just a bit, and you’ll know that there are some days when everything just clicks, but sometimes (maybe a lot?) it doesn’t. Similarly, there are days when we show up to the synagogue, church, or dojo and we are focused; versus days when every moment seems like a slog through the mud. But… maybe we’re expecting too much. Is it reasonable to expect most days to be unicorns and sunshine and hot java? What does our religious/moral/ethical POV teach us about how we set our expectations for a “normal” day in IT?In this episode Leon, Josh, Doug, and new voice Steven Hunt discuss these ideas and explore whether there are there lessons we can take from one area of our life to the other about how to get through (and move past) a bad day – whether it’s in the office, in the gym, or in the pews. Listen or read the transcript below.

Leon: 00:00 Welcome
to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and
inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious
views working in corporate it. We’re not here to preach or teach you
our religion. We’re here to explore ways we make our career as it
professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life.
This is technically religious

Josh: 00:21 Work
in IT for just a bit and you’ll know that there are some days when
everything just clicks, but sometimes all right, maybe a lot it
doesn’t. Similarly, there are days when we show up to the synagogue,
church, or Dojo and we are focused versus days when every moment
seems like a slog through the mud, but maybe we’re expecting too
much. Is it reasonable to expect most days to be unicorns and
sunshine and hot java? What does our religious moral, ethical point
of view teach us about how we set our expectations for a “normal”
day in IT? Are there lessons we can take from one area of our life to
the other about how to get through and move past a bad day, whether
it’s in the office, in the gym, or in the pews. I’m Josh Biggley. And
the other voices you’re going to hear in this episode are my
podcasting partner in crime, Leon Adato.

Josh: 01:20 All
right everyone. So this is the point in the show where we’re going to
do some some shameless self promotion. Um, so again, I’m Josh
Biggley. I’m a Senior Engineer for Enterprise Monitoring. You can
find me on Twitter at @jbiggley and uh, ya know, faithtransitions.ca
is a website that I recently started with my wife for Canadians, uh,
who are going through some form of faith transition. Doug, anything
you want to, uh, to, uh, talk to us about?

Doug: 01:47 Uh,
I’m Doug Johnson. I’m CTO for wave RFID. We do inventory management
using radio waves in the, uh, optical shop. Uh, I’ve recently dropped
off of just about all social media. So the only thing I’ve got right
now is a cooking website called .cooklose.com. So if you’d like
recipes head on over.

Steven: 02:07 I’m
Steven Hunt, I’m Senior Director of Product Management at Data Corp
software. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at, @SteveWHunt. Uh, and
when I actually have the site up and uh, I haven’t let it lapse in
payment, you can read my blog on RamblingsOfATechJunkie.com.

Leon: 02:24 So
it sounds like it’s my turn. Uh, I’m Leon Adato. I’m one of the Head
Geeks at SolarWinds. You can find me on the Twitters @LeonAdato and
uh, you can also find my blog adatosystems.com. And for those people
who scribbling madly either Ramblings of a Tech Junkie or Cook Loose
or any of those, we’re going to have that in the show notes. So
don’t, scribble no more. Just listen and enjoy.

Josh: 02:46 I
mean, fine. Yeah. Find your zen this, this is going to be a good
episode because some of us have bad days at the office, right?

Leon: 02:55 All
of us, all of us have bad days at the office. [Laughing].

Leon: 03:00 Right?
Um, actually, OK. So, so I actually think we should start a little
bit elsewhere, not in the office, not in the tech office at least.
Um, but I want to start in with our religious, moral or ethical, uh,
or basically non technical point of view because I think that’s where
we recognize that things are hard and we are either more or
differently prone to address them. Um, what I mean by that is that I
think many of us recognize that sometimes worship or prayer can be
hard. Um, first of all, there’s the mechanics of it. Um, I know I
still, uh, having gone from being not particularly religious Jewishly
to being orthodox still eight or nine years later, struggle with just
the mechanics of reading Hebrew and knowing what part of the service
we’re in and knowing what’s supposed to happen. It, it is still a
thing for me. Um, and that’s hard then. But then there’s also moments
when just the thing I’m confronting or, or praying about or working
on myself about is hard too. Um, I don’t know. What do you, what are
do you folks think?

Josh: 04:12 I
think that’s, I, you know, that last part, right? And it does, this
is one of those moments where it doesn’t really matter if, if you’re
talking about your religious or your moral or your ethical pursuits
when you have to step back and, and try to do some, some
self-examination, some introspection that is really difficult to do.
Uh, I just went through some training, uh, for leadership, uh, at my
company and it was all about really taking a look at yourself and
deconstructing the things that you think you do well. Um, and then
this, this wonderful and gut wrenching experience of asking your
peers, including, uh, your, your reports, your managers, the
engineers who work with you to give you anonymous feedback. I guess I
could have really couched that, uh, you know, that list of people by
asking people that I knew were going to give me positive feedback.
But I mean, isn’t the reason that we engage in those, those exercises
is we want the, the harsh critiques. We want to know, uh, even where
our enemies know where we’re at. I don’t know that, that’s not
something that I’m, I’m sure that people really embrace. Right. How
is it normal to want to, uh, to, you know, to have that feedback from
others? I mean, is that why we go to deity because we expect, uh,
him, her, it to, to give us the, the harsh reality when we’re not
getting it from others?

Doug: 05:45 I
think so the hard thing for me is really knowing whether you’re doing
it right or not. I mean, Leon was saying, you know, there’s, there’s
a way you do things in the Orthodox world. Well in the Chris, uh,
Evangelical Christian world, there is not necessarily the right way
to do it, although, Gosh, yeah, there are enough books on prayer say,
to go ahead and, uh, keep you reading for the rest of your life and
you’ll never pray again.

Doug: 06:12 The
problem is, you know, how do you, you need to learn how to do it in a
way that makes some sense. I mean, I, I keep coming back to God knows
everything. Why does he need me to pray to him to know? And I
understand that it’s, you know, it’s for me, not for him, but still,
how do you do it in a way that gets me into the, uh, you know, the
right way to do that. So you know, the how to can get in the way of
the actual process itself.

Leon: 06:44 Yeah.
I think there’s, there’s many moments when you were like, what the
hell am I supposed to be doing here? You know, and not just, not just
do I stand up or sit down kind of what the hell do I do, but also
like, okay, where, where are we going with this? You know, when my,
when, when a track coach says, run that way as fast as you can and
jump over those hurdles, then it’s pretty straight forward. But it’s
a little bit less clear.

Steven: 07:08 No,
I was gonna say that, that’s one of the things that, that, that I
struggled with growing up a Southern Baptist when you were mentioning
the, the aspect of what, what am I doing here? How I don’t, I, it
just doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t, you know, fit. That was, that
was something I constantly dealt with. Right. And then coming, coming
to a conclusion that, that I just, I don’t have an identification
with any deity. I don’t, you know, it’s not something that fits me.
And, and I guess if you will, casting that aside, um, you know, it,
it, it changed a little bit of the way that I think, the way that I
look at it, I, I stopped trying to fit into a mold that wasn’t me and
started to be more myself. Right. And that’s something that, that it
was, it’s, it’s a, it’s a struggle. It was a daily struggle. It was a
very difficult concept to deal with. And that’s where bad days were
more consistent at that point in time for me.

Leon: 08:02 And
I think there’s a, there’s, to put it in a, again, a workout context,
like some, for some people spin classes never gonna work like this,
just not gonna, but for those same people rowing or curling or.

Steven: 08:18 Well,
that, that’s, I, I do Crossfit and Crossfit. It’s not for everyone.
Right. And a lot of people make fun of crossfit constantly, but, but
for me, it fits, it, it, it, it gives me the workout that I’m looking
for. It gives me the, uh, the, the, the health benefits that, that
ultimately I’m looking for and I just enjoy doing it. But if I were
out there trying to be a runner and I am not a runner, it would be a
terrible thing. It’d be, it’d be horrible. I would, I, first of all,
I don’t know the first thing about running effectively. I look bad.
I, my, my times are terrible. And so you, you gravitate to what feels
natural to what, what works for you.

Leon: 08:56 Okay.
All right. And I think the interesting thing is that when you’re
talking about, you know, a health regime, a health regimen, um,
that’s one thing, you know, you can, you can sort of find your space.
But I think when you’re talking about, you know, religious, ethical,
moral, the variety of choices you have is limited. If you feel drawn
to, um, whether you feel drawn to a god concept or a philosophical
concept, your choices are limited. And so if you doesn’t feel right,
you know, that’s again, that’s the bad day at the office. What, what
is that like, how does that work in that religious ethical context?

Steven: 09:33 It
mostly takes you were you working through you, you, you have to come
to terms with who you are, what you feel, what you think, um, and,
and that helps you ultimately, uh, reconcile with whatever that is
that, that, that’s bringing you down at any given time.

Leon: 09:51 Okay.
So, so other bad days, uh, in the non tech office w uh, what are some
other experiences you guys have had?

Doug: 09:57 We
were just talking about, you know, finding, finding your, uh, your,
uh, regimen, your what religion you’re going to be, but you know,
once you found the one that works for you, everything’s all perfect
from then on, right?

Doug: 10:14 Those
are the bad days that man, I mean like all of the, so I’ve picked the
one. All right. I’m an evangelical Christian. I, you know, I’ve,
I’ve, I’ve, I take, took the pill, I bought the, drank the Koolaid,
whatever, you know, but not to the point where I..

New
Speaker: 10:33 Exactly.
I, it’s just, you know, I, I still think I still have my freaking
Philosophy major that just makes me question everything. And there
are just some days where it doesn’t go well. Um, I mean I, I actually
haven’t been going to church lately cause I’ve had some health
issues. I’ve had this vertigo thing last time I went to church, this
is, you know, I’d been stable for awhile and I got there and I drove
to church and I got there and the church was getting set to start and
all of a sudden the room started spinning. What do you do? So I went
over to the prayer corner, which is outside there and put my head
down and close my eyes and I look like I was praying through the
whole service for the service and everybody thought I was
hyper-spiritual but I just, you know, the room was moving.

New
Speaker: 11:22 So
it’s, you know, after, after 25 minutes the drugs kicked in and I was
able to go home and that was my last big service because I had a bad
day at the service, not because of the service, but just my body
chose that it didn’t want to do that that day.

Leon: 11:39 I
think one of the big things there was that you didn’t let it throw
you. Like, I think some people would say it’s a sign, you know, or
something like that. You didn’t let it know, no, this is just my body
being my body.

Doug: 11:49 It’s
all right. Oops. And like I said, there’s some people who, who saw me
that day, but I think I’m really, really spiritual now.

Josh: 11:54 Interestingly,
the one of the hardest days that I had in my religious observance.
Uh, and for those who have not, um, have not listened to any of the
previous episodes first, shame on you. Go back and listen to all of
our backlog. Yeah. I grew up Mormon and I, I was, uh, I would say I
was an Orthodox Mormon, sometimes ultra Orthodox for 41 ish years.
And I was reminded of the moment that I realized that Mormonism
didn’t work for me anymore. Uh, I was on Facebook today and I saw a
woman in one of the support groups that I, that I’m in who posted
having read some things and she’s like, “I have realized that my
entire world is a lie”. I can still remember the exact moment. I
can remember where on the plane I was sitting. I can remember where I
was looking at and like looking out the window, I remember kind of
like, you know, the lighting, like everything in that moment when I
realized that walking away from Mormonism was the thing I had to do,
that there was no going back. That was a hard day. And that’s one of
those pivotal moments and I think we all have them. At some points in
our lives. And Steven, I loved hearing that, that you had a moment
where you went, “I don’t think I belong here anymore and I have
to walk away”. We all have those moments where we either choose
that we’re going to stay and we in, we entrench ourselves because
it’s what we want or we have to make a decision to walk away. You
cannot live in the upside down. It does not work. You, you, you have
to live in reality. Uh, and if you get pulled back into that, that
gray space in your life, you have to confront it. And that, that’s
my, I’m a, I’m very passionate about people embracing their pursuit
of whatever it is. And it doesn’t matter if it’s the cult of Crossfit
and yes, Steven, it is a cult. I want you to know that.

Josh: 14:05 But
whether, you know, it’s, it’s the cult of Crossfit or the cult
Christianity or the cult of Mormonism or, you know, whatever it would
ever, those beliefs, those indoctrinated beliefs are, you have to
decide if you are going to live them or if you’re going to go live
something else. Uh, the people that I found most frustrating when I
was a Orthodox Mormon was the people who were like,”Yeah, you
know, I really, I’m okay with these parts, but I don’t really want to
do the hard things. And, you know, showing up to church on Sunday is
kind of fun and it’s, you know, but I don’t want to put the work in!”
And I’m like, “You know, you gotta put the work in!” So
yeah, you gotta do the hard things.

Leon: 14:45 Yeah.
And I think that there’s, there’s a difference. I’m going to
challenge what, what’s been said. A little…

Leon: 14:50 [Laughing]
Ok, I’m not challenging that part! 100% in agreement, but I think
that there are moments when you realize that something is simply not
you but I think that a lot of folks, um, you know, especially in
relilgious context, because it, uh, feels somewhat optional, uh, but
in other contexts as well it, uh, to what you were saying Josh, its a
little bit challenging, its a little bit uncomfortable and so I’m not
going to do it. And, and, so I have a story about that. I was, uh,
walking out of Synagogue, and there was somebody who was new, and you
always know the new people, just because they are, uh, new, and, uh,
the regulars are the regulars. And this new person has just shown up
and they were there and, uh, they were walking out and the Rabbi
said, “So, you know, what’s your name?” and got to know him
and, so, “How ya doing?” And the person, very honestly,
said “Ya know, I just wasn’t feeling it. It just wasn’t working
for me. Maybe this just isn’t my thing?” And, I’ll never forget,
my Rabbi gave him, sort of, THAT look. You know, that stern,
over-the-glasses, look, and said “You know, aren’t guaranteed
two-scoops of epiphany in every box of Shabbat-Crunch cereal.”
Ya know, you’re, you don’t, maybe you have to put a little work into
this before you gonna feel it in some way. And, and, I want to put
out that a bad day in the pews, a bad day, um, especially when it is
one of your first days, A), is gonna happen, but sometimes it’s not a
bad day, but it’s just a regular day. That those euphoric days that,
maybe, we were sold on thinking we were supposed to get every single
time, Doug, to your point, ya know, “Boy, I can’t be as
religious as that guy with his head down in the corner! Wow, he was
really intense! How do you do that, I didn’t feel anything like
that!!” Ya, he wasn’t feeling it either, but you didn’t know
that.

Leon: 14:50 Umm,
ya know, I think that, that you have to recognize that, that those
are some days! Umm, whether they are every day or most days or just a
few, ya know, you can’t show up just once to the gym and walk out
looking like “Arnold” or whatever. It’s gonna take a little
bit of work. So, uhh, right, wrong, different, what do you guys
think?

Doug: 14:50 I
think that, sometimes, the expectations are that we’re going to an
awful lot more of those epiphanies than really we should expect. One,
one of the things that interests me, because, I, I read through the
Bible more than once a year. I mean, just continually reading through
it, and I am amazed how rarely God talks to even the people that, I
mean, Abraham, he, he would speak to Abraham and then he would go off
doing his God thing somewhere…

Doug: 14:50 …for
20, 25 years. And Abraham is just chugging along. Most of us, if God
doesn’t appear to us in a dream and at least once every three weeks
we, you know, get worried about it. It’s like, no, you’re not gonna
have that many epiphanies. You just, you need to just sort of keep at
it.

Josh: 18:01 I
think that’s an interesting point, right? Yeah. Sometimes when we go
into situations, whether we’re, you know, we’re pursuing a new, uh,
political belief, uh, I followed the Greens for a long time, then
left and now I’ve headed back. Or whether you’re, uh, you know, uh, a
moral philosophy, religious observance, we see the people who have
been practicing that, uh, that lifestyle for years and we have this
expectation that we’re going to walk in and suddenly be like them.
We’re going to know all the right things to say, we’re going to know
all the right things to do. We’re going to know what not to do. Um,
you know, apparently bringing a Styrofoam Cup to the Green Party’s,
um, meeting as a bad idea, you, those sorts of things, right?

Josh: 18:48 Right?
Um, you know, shuttle left the, a 12 cylinder Jag at home, but those
are the things that aren’t, that are hard. And we have this, we have
this, this, uh, instant gratification problem, at least in Western
society where we expect that because we want it and because we
really, really want it. It’s just going to happen. And that hard work
isn’t there. But I, I will. And I’m going to put on my parent hat
now. So I’ll tell you that the, the most, uh, difficult things that
you do will often be the most rewarding. I, I, I know I’m making fun
of that, but it really, the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life
have been the things that when I overcame them were really the most
satisfying. And I think that that’s for religious observance as well.
If it works for you, do it. Um, I mean, don’t be a jerk, but cause
that’s a bad thing. We already [stumbling] Nah, I’m not gonna go
there. I’m like, do, do the thing that is hard because you know it’s
the right thing to do.

Leon: 19:55 Yeah.
Um, okay. So, so Steven, I’m going to call you out a little bit just
cause, uh, I know that weightlifting is one of the things that you do
and uh, I will fully admit that I do not, um, if I say that I’m in
shape, it’s simply because round is a shape.

Leon: 20:07 It
however everyone else in my family were weightlifters and
powerlifters and football players and things like that. I was the
runt of the litter. And, um, so I, I know just from osmosis about it
and there’s always that moment when the, the new, it’s always guys,
the new guy walks into the gym and you know, either loads up way too
much weight on the bench press or just is, you know, arms are puffed
out, chest is puffed out. And, in a bad gym, everyone steps away in a
good gym, everyone steps forward, but they’re all aware that this guy
is going to hurt himself or someone else or the equipment. Worst of
all the equipment. Um, and I dunno, Steven, if you have any
experiences with that.

Steven: 20:54 I
mean in, in Crossfit constantly, right? It’s where the Crossfit is
known for poor form, bad movements and people doing it wrong, like
doing lifts wrong. Um, and, and to your point, a, a bad gym is, is
one that lets you keep doing it. They’re like, “Hey, that guy
is, you know, he’s, he’s here, he’s lifting”, uh, or “She’s
here. She’s lifting”. Um, the good gym is the one that says,
hey, take a, you know what you’re doing right here. Let’s make an
adjustment. And the people that, uh, that want to get better, that
they want to make that evolution, they receive that criticism. Well,
the ones that, uh, think they know what they’re doing and don’t want
to hear any, any constructive criticisms, they may not show up next
time or they may lash out at you, um, that there may be steroids
involved there. I don’t know.

Leon: 21:48 [Laughing]
Or just, or just bad temper. I mean, it doesn’t always have to be
drug induced. It can just sometimes even learn, you know, just a
jerk. And, uh, and I will tell you that that is not, um, absent from
the synagogue as well. Sometimes people come in and they’re, uh,
clearly uncertain about what’s going on. But when someone tries to
offer a helping hand, they, uh, respond poorly.

Leon: 22:13 Right?
[Laughing] Yeah, they’re, they’re not. [Laughing] Right. Okay. So, so
I think we’ve run down, uh, bad days in, uh, the gym, the Dojo, the
Pew, the synagogue, et cetera. I want to pivot to what a bad day
looks like in it. Um, because you know, just what, what does it look
like? Because I’ll start it off. You know, some days the machine
actually is out to get you, no matter what you try. Um, I, I don’t
know why I have had experiences where over the course of hours or
sometimes days, I experienced rapid multiple system collapse. And
what I mean by that is that a hard drive on my laptop dies and also
two of the four monitors on my desktop system die and the the washing
machine dies and something goes out on the car. Like all systems
begin to crumble around and like, all right, I, it must be me this
week. I’m just not going to touch anything else. I, I dunno if you’ve
had that experience, but sometimes the machines just don’t like you.

Leon: 23:27 I
wish. And if they had just told me that that’s what it was or that I
was revolting, I would have left them alone. But no, I had to go buy
a new hard drive and monitor and you know, all that stuff.

Doug: 23:37 I
mean it happens that way. I always people, people are, we’ll be
working on something say, well this is going well and I’m going, “Oh,
you just jinxed it.”

Doug: 23:47 “Why
would you ever say that?” You never say it’s going well because
you just set it up to go the, the, the, the computer gods are now
going to go ahead and throw a lightning bolt and it will take out
your hard drive or something along that line. It just, you can’t do
that.

Josh: 24:04 I
once did a SAN upgrade and I think I have, I’ve actually shared this
story, um, on the, on this podcast. So, I did this SAN upgrade, um,
at my last employer, um, it was for our vmware environment. We are a
managed services provider, so we had a bunch of hosted vms. Um, and
like most companies, you know, you did backups, but we hadn’t really
tested all of our backups so we didn’t actually know if our backups
worked. Started the SAN upgrade. Suddenly we had no, no drives
anymore. Uh, the whole SAN was gone at 20 hours later. I’m on the
phone with both vmware and the SAN provider and both engineers said,
“We have nothing for you. I hope your backups are good.” I
mean, you get real religious when your entire, I mean like everything
is gone there. There were no LUNs. Uh, yeah, that, that is probably
my single worst day at the office. And that was a long day.

Leon: 25:08 Right.
I’m talking about the demo, talking about the gods, the tech Gods.
Um, I’ve always found it amusing and slightly horrifying that at
conventions, um, most notably DevOps days tends to do this because
it’s, it’s multiple talks, one right after another. And a lot of them
are live demos and so there’s a shrine off to the side, a shrine to
the demo gods. And people will come up and make a make offerings and
there is serious prayer going. These are people who in any other
context would tell you that they were absolutely irreligious that
they had no connection, that they were devout atheists or at least
agnostics, right? They just have nothing and yet they are making deep
obeisances , you know they are bowing down to the, to the demo guys
because live demos during a talk like you should never, never do.

Josh: 26:06 Do
not do live demos? Oh my goodness that is like, that is like playing
craps with the devil. Like, oh.

Steven: 26:15 You,
you, you have to sacrifice entire server rack to the demo gods for a
live demo presentation. It’s just, it’s a, it’s 100% required. I
can’t think of the amount of times. It was funny. Leon you mentioned,
regardless of, you know, if you’re atheist or agnostic, you, you, you
immediately go to that shrine it if you have to do a demo that day, I
don’t know. I can’t count the number of offerings I made it
SolarWinds when we were doing some type of demo during our
recordings. And then live demos at an event were just, I couldn’t, it
was just one of those things that you freak out constantly.

Leon: 26:52 As
a side note, if anybody’s who’s listening wants to see something
very, very funny, go to the SolarWinds Youtube Channel, Look for the
50th episode anniversary where they do a whole montage of demos going
wrong and you’ll see Steven having just a really, really bad time
with something over and over again. So yes, I think I was there for a
few of those. Demo Demo. Extravaganzas um…

Doug: 27:18 Yet
sometimes it can go well. I mean, when I was writing, um, medical
software and one of the things that we did, it was called, it was
called the shootout. And so we actually had to demo our software, our
medical record software in front of 500 physicians. It was done every
year and they put two people up. And so if a physician would stand
there and would actually dictate one of the records that, that, that
you, you were allowed to preload your stuff, but you had to do it
live. And, one year, my partner and I, who is actually now my
business partner in WaveRFID, uh, we were the ones that were doing
it. I’m was the technical person. She was the lead one and we were
demoing Alpha software. It was a brand new version that we were doing
in front of 500 docs and it all went out like 10 minutes before it
started. We ran down the hall, came all the way back, shoved a new
version in and demo’d the thing. But because we did our obese, you
know, we said, it’s not us. We are so sorry. This is alpha. Please
forgive us. We humbled ourselves and the demo went great, you know,
so some days it works out if you’re suitably obeisant.

Leon: 28:29 Yes.
Wow. I, yeah, it’s, that’s, I can’t imagine, I mean you call it a
shootout because you’re just like, “Just shoot me now”.
Yeah. Um, wow. That’s insane. And it, and I think that if you’ve been
working in it for any amount of time, you know, there’s, there’s
similar stories like that. Um, and okay, so pivoting from demo and
machines, there’s other parts of being in it that are bad day to, um,
I, I think that many of us wish for a world that we grew up watching
or some of us grew up watching in star trek where everyone in the
engineering, uh, in the engineering area was incredibly competent and
everyone got along. Even if they didn’t always get along, they still
got everything done and a, they were all focused on solutions and
stuff like that. And the reality is that in IT shops, uh, across the
globe, politics is a thing. Trademark all rights reserved. Um,
sometimes it’s not the machine that’s out to get you, it’s a coworker
or another department that simply wants your budget or whatever. And
we have to put up with those things also. Um, so that’s another thing
that causes a bad day is when you don’t actually get to do your job
because you’re dealing with the politics of doing your job. Or the
process, you know, it doesn’t always have to be a political, you
know, show down necessarily, but it’s, you know, do I really have to
spend the next hour and a half doing timesheets or expenses or, you
know, five year forecasting, you know, because that’s always useful
in it. I can’t forecast five months accurately, but you want five
years. Great. Great.

Josh: 30:11 Yeah.
So I, I remember being a brand new engineer a long time ago, 20,
20-ish years ago now, and thinking all, all I’ll need to know if I
can just memorize the OSI model. Like I can have, if I can just
memorize the OSI model, it’s gonna be a thing. Um, I mean, I, I know
the OSI model, I can’t remember the last time I had to reference it.
Um, but that, that’s it. Like sometimes the things that are hard are,
are of our own making.

Leon: 30:43 I
will say that the OSI Model I reference all the time talking about
bad days at the office because every tech project I’ve ever worked on
has failed at layers eight, nine and 10 OSI model, which is finance,
politics and compliance.

Doug: 31:00 I’ve
had the benefit of working mostly for myself. So the only political
problem I’ve have is convincing myself to get myself doing the job.
But when I did work for a large corp for awhile, I was given a
project where I had to go ahead and make this thing work with an
existing service. And this existing service was controlled by
somebody who was saying that, well, we’re going to be replacing this
and this was his little area and he didn’t want to share it with
anybody and because it was going to be replaced, um, I couldn’t use
his old service, but the new service wasn’t going to be ready in time
for us to do the rest of it. But he wouldn’t give me what I needed to
go ahead and use the old service and he wouldn’t let me be a Beta
site for the new service. So that I would have it. And so here I am
and there’s no way I can do this thing without using this service.
And there’s one guy who owns it and it was his,

Steven: 31:57 That’s
why star Trek, uh, is, is, is fantasy. Because having to interact
with other human beings to, to get something done doesn’t always
bring out the rosiest of situations. You, you, you have to, you have
to interact with someone and they have other priorities that aren’t
necessarily aligning with your priorities. Um, heaven forbid that,
that you have to have different priorities because what you need to
get done, you need to get done now and what they need to get done,
they need to get done now. And if those don’t align, then it, then
that clash is going to happen you, and if it’s not happening in the
timeframe that you ultimately need it to be bad day popping up
immediately without warning.

Leon: 32:38 So
you’re saying the of Star Trek was not the phasers or the tricorder
or the faster than light travel, that that’s all normal. That’s
reality. The fantasy was that everyone got along all the time.

Steven: 32:48 Yeah,
absolutely. Like [laughing] we have phasers now don’t we?

Josh: 32:51 Well
see, I know what we’re missing, right? We’re, we’re missing the
obligatory red shirt that, that guy who won’t give you access to his,
his software. You just pulled a red shirt, you know, over him and you
throw them into the meeting because we all know what happens to, you
know, the guy wearing the red shirt.

Steven: 33:08 I
thought Josh was going to go the other way and say you kill the
person with the red shirt.

Leon: 33:22 Okay,
so one, I think one last thing that I want to talk about as far as it
bad days is, um, is when we, the bad day has to do with the next
thing we have to do. And I don’t mean just like the thing on our
tack, task list, but the thing we have to learn, um, you know, just
putting that out to everyone who’s listening and, and you three, you
know, how many times have you resisted learning about the next thing,
whether it was cloud or object oriented programming or ITIL or IP
version 6 or something like that

Leon: 33:59 Okay.
So you resist it because like I have enough on my plate.

Steven: 34:02 It’s
usually, it’s usually comes down to that just trying to get something
new in your knowledge. Bank a is oftentimes budding up against
everything else that you have to do. Um, and, and once you set aside
the, the, the urge to just ignore it and you actually consume that
information, you learn that net new thing. Um, I, I can remember
when, when I was doing consulting for, for Citrix projects and having
to learn when they, they had just acquired this new company, NetSix,
and, and here comes this new, uh, VPN product and it’s like, “I’m
dealing with virtualization over here. I don’t want to deal with a
VPN product!” And, and just putting it off and putting it off
and putting it off. And next thing you know, like here you go, you’ve
got to learn it. We’ve got to have a certification in it. There’s no,
no other way about it. It’s like, “Ah, OK, all right, I’ll learn
it.” And then next thing you know, you’ve got this great new
technology you get to incorporate in your, your knowledge stack and
you have way more opportunities, uh, that oh, that opened up for you
to do more things either from a consulting realm or for your company.
You can enable, you know, new capabilities, new functionalities. But
we push it aside cause we just don’t have time

Doug: 35:20 I
was going to say that actually even goes back to some of the, we were
talking about in the religious side. I mean there’s, I love learning
new things, but I want to learn the new stuff that I want to learn.
And sometimes what your, the environment that you’re in says no, the
thing that you need to learn now is x, whatever this, whatever x
happens to be, it can be in the IT world for this next thing you need
to learn this in the religious world. You really need to get, you
need to work on your prayer life, you know? And so people from the
outside are telling you, here’s what you need to do. It’s for me,
it’s real easy to learn something new if it’s something I want to
learn. But it’s, you know, as Stephen was saying, it’s like if it’s
something you have to learn, you may not get around to it until
somebody from the outside goes ahead and sort of cracks the whip a
little bit and then won’t. But once you’ve gone ahead and pressed
through, it’s like, oh, this is great. Yeah.

Josh: 36:21 Cool.
It’s interesting because I’ve built my entire, my entire career off
of the phrase, uh, “I don’t know”. Uh, my, my second job,
uh, that I got, I had this, this panel interview in which I was asked
a series of questions to which I did not know any of the answers
because I had only been in the IT field for, for a professionally,
for a year. Um, and as I laughed, they said, you know, is there
anything you’d like to say, uh, you know, before we end the
interview. And I said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t know the things
that you asked, but if you’re willing to teach me, um, I’d love to
learn.” And I really think that, that for me, defines what I
want to do and what I tried to do in IT. I don’t, I don’t know
everything. I still am, I’m terrible at scripting. I really am. Um,
but I can do an awful lot more now than I could five years ago or a
year ago. And that’s that for me, whether we’re talking about a
pursuit of an IT lesson or whether we’re talking about the pursuit of
some, you know, ideology, whether it’s physical or mental or
spiritual or intellectual, go out and approach it with the, “Hey,
I just don’t know, like it’s hard. Um, and I don’t know it yet, but
damn it, I’m going to learn.” And those are the people for me.
You know, we talked about those engineers, those idyllic Star Trek
engineers. I would rather take an engineer who said to me, “Josh,
I don’t know how to do this, but I’m going to go figure it out.”
And then comes back and says, “Hey, here’s what I’ve got. Let’s
collaborate. Get it done.” To me, that, that is a thing that
takes those really hard things to do and makes them so much easier.

Leon: 38:07 Okay.
So last piece, and this is actually I think where, um, uh, a lot of
the learnings, uh, are going to happen. We’ve talked about bad days,
uh, in our non-tech life and we’ve talked about that days in our tech
life. What lessons can we carry or have we carried over from one to
the other. It might be something that you knew really well in your
tech world that you carried into your religious or ethical or moral
life or vice versa. And Josh, I think to the point you just said, um,
is a strong one. I think as IT people, we are more prone, we are more
comfortable saying, “I don’t know that” whether that’s
“Hey, I don’t know, Active Directory” or “I don’t know
why that that just happened, but I’m going to find out.” I think
that we are generally speaking, we don’t feel emotionally challenged
to say things like that. Um, but I think that there’s a huge
resistance for some people in some cases to say, I don’t know, in a
religious or you know, ethical or philosophical context. Um, and
maybe that’s the fear that if I, if I say, I don’t know, there may
not actually be an answer. And if there isn’t an answer to this one
question, maybe the entire religious structure is somehow false,
which is sort of an irrational fear. But I think that it’s one that
people have. And so the answer to that is just don’t say, I don’t
know, which doesn’t work really well either, but, uh, people fall
into that trap.

Josh: 39:39 Yeah.
So I, ironically, the thing that I, that I did that led me away from
my religious observance was to embrace uncertainty. Uh, you know,
being Ultra Orthodox, I was so certain that I knew the truth that
when I no longer could look at the facts and say that I, that they
were true, it was, I had to step away. So my lesson, uh, I’m, and I
have to, cause I’m a cheat here. One is to “Embrace the
uncertainty” and the other is “Sleep on it.” No, no.
Like seriously sleep on, I cannot count the number of times where
I’ve spent my entire day banging my head against a problem. And then
when, you know, I’m just going to go to bed and then you get up the
next morning, you’re like, oh, that’s how you solve this one. And I
don’t care if you’re talking about IT or if you’re talking about, you
know, a problem at home or with a colleague or with a friend, or just
sleep on it, man. A good night’s rest does everyone well.

Doug: 40:38 I
found that, um, the, one of the things that I learned in coming more
from my religious life into my technical life, um, the thing that
makes me have the worst days during religious services is watching
everybody around me worshiping the way that they worship and it being
all about them. And you know, they’re just, you know, hands up and
whoop-ti-do and all that kind of stuff I’m like, just drives me
crazy. Um, but then I realize it’s like, okay, but here I am. I am
letting their weirdness stand between me and God and I just need to
sort of like, stop, roll myself back, let them be them, and then go
ahead and have my, uh, my experience with, you know, getting this
done, the service. And, when you take that into the IT world, there
are people that have got opinions and they’re, you know, we gotta do
it this way and yeah, everybody’s an expert and all this stuff and
you’re trying to work on a team and I can sit there going in my head,
these people are freaking idiots.

Doug: 41:43 But
I then go ahead and roll it back and say, nope, this is just me.
Let’s go ahead and work with this and you know, there, but, and I can
go ahead and take that tolerance that I have made myself learn in the
religious world. Otherwise I would hate my fellow brothers and
sisters in Christ and bring that so that I can be better on a team.
I, I was a terrible team person in my thirties and forties I mean,
you know, I got stuff done, but because we’d slam it through and now
I’m actually really, I’m good at coaching people and working with
them because I know that my tendency is to be judgmental even when
it’s not justified.

Steven: 42:24 Yeah,
for me, the, I think the, the biggest lesson from religious
nonreligious work standpoint is you just got to view things through a
positive lens. Like if you just take and go into your day, I’m not
thinking everyone’s out to get, you know, not thinking that, uh, that
the, you know, that whatever you’re going to have to deal with that
day is going to be difficult or hard, um, that you know, that is not
going to ultimately affect you negatively if you just walk into that
situation or that day with, with that positive lens, you’re like,
you’re going to have a better day. But, but as well, everyone else
around you is probably gonna have a better day because you’re in a
better frame of mind. Or at least I know that when I’ve got a bad day
going on or I don’t feel you were really great, I’m usually making
everyone around me miserable. So if I can avoid that at all costs, I
feel like, that’s usually something I should, should, should attempt
at least

Leon: 43:30 So
something that, uh, I learned recently. Um, it was an insight from,
uh, from my rabbi, Rabbi Davidovich. Um, he, so every morning in the
Orthodox Jewish, uh, service, the morning service, uh, you go over
the sacrifices, you just sort of read through the text of what the
sacrifices are and how they’re handled. And right at the very
beginning, it talks about how, uh, the priests go in and they take
the ashes of yesterday, sacrifice out first. That’s what they, that’s
what they do. And that’s right at the beginning of sort of this
section of the, of the prayers is, you know, the, the Kohanim, the
priests, they go in, they took the ashes and they took them all the
way outside the camp and they dumped them. And Rabbi Davidovich’s
insight to that was, that’s a metaphor for how we treat yesterday’s
experience. Um, that you could have had a horrible, awful, painful,
gut wrenching, useless, unproductive day yesterday. And so when you
show up the next day for prayer, you might feel like, oh, I just, I
can’t, what, what, what am I supposed to do? I, I can’t have another
one like that. And this piece of text is telling you no, no, no. That
was yesterday. Take the ashes, dump them outside the camp. They’re,
they’re, they, they don’t belong here anymore. Today’s prayer has no
resemblance. It’s an entirely new set of sacrifices and entirely new
set of work that is not contingent on or related to yesterday’s work
in any way. By this, by the way, at the same time, if yesterday was
an amazing day and you’ve got an incredible amount of stuff done and
you were really focused and you really had an amazing prayer day,
those ashes, they also get dumped outside the camp you that today
the, the proof of how today is gonna go is how today is going to go.
Nothing about yesterday affects or reflects or is a precursor to how
today is going to go. And that insight from the religious context is
one that I think is, is something that I can use a lot in, uh, in my
it work, whether it’s writing or whether it’s giving a talk or, uh,
Steven, to your point, having a, you know, going in and doing another
video. It doesn’t matter if yesterday’s video was a complete train
wreck, you know, flaming dumpster fire today is a different day to
record. It might be a different date to record what I did yesterday
poorly, all over again because we can do that, but it’s, it’s not in
any way reflective of what happened yesterday. Um, and that allows me
to break free or get clear of the bad feeling from the day before.

Steven: 46:31 With
that, thank you guys for having me this time. I, Leon, thank you for
staying on me to ultimately get me get beyond here and the do, uh, do
one of these sessions with you guys. Um, I, I will definitely try to
make it, uh, more in the future.

Doug: 46:46 And
my final insight is if you’re having a bad day, it’s probably you.

Doug: 46:53 Nine
Times out of 10, if I’m having a bad day, it’s me and I just need to,
I mean, and the good thing about that is if I’m having a bad day,
nine times out of 10, it’s me. And if there’s one thing I can change,
it’s me.

Josh: 47:06 Thanks
for making time for us this week to hear more of Technically
Religious. Visit our website, TechnicallyReligious.com where you can
find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and
connect with us on social media.

Leon: 47:19 A
wise person once said, don’t let a bad day make you feel bad about
yourself.